HOW PHIL GOT TO BE HERE...Well, first I will explain how a Phil this large came to be. In the early morning hours of a June 1988 day, a fire started at the Pacific Formosa Restaurant on East Mahoning Street in Punxsutawney. The fire took out the entire block on the northeast corner of N. Findlay Street and E. Mahoning Street, doing damage to the National Bank of the Commonwealth, Eddie's Men's & Boys' Wear store, the restaurant and the Farmers' and Miners' Branch of the S&T Bank.
In an effort to fill the now empty block, a gazebo was put in place as well as some temporary landscaping. The Inner Circle of the Groundhog Club brought up a suggestion of making “the world's largest groundhog statue” but dismissed the issue. The idea was taken up by a small core of community minded individuals and brought to fruition by a committee comprised of Mary Ellen Piszker, Gail Sherwood, Roger Steele, Carl Eichhorn and Joe Elliott. Cut from nine sheets of plywood, the “statue” was painted brown, white and gray and assembled at the Penna. National Guard Armory on N. Findlay Street under the watchful eye of Eichhorn, a paralyzed German paratrooper and tool-and-die maker who had emigrated to the US in 1955. Unveiled to the public on Groundhog Day eve, 1991, the statue rose 24 feet high and was attached to a utility pole sunk into the gravel lot. Phil sported a black top hat and a folded eight foot umbrella in his paw.
A copy of the original Phil statue was made for the movie Groundhog Day which was released in 1993. In the movie, the statue was destroyed by the main character portrayed by actor Bill Murray as he drove a red Cadillac into the statue one dark Groundhog Day evening. The Phil statue on the S&T lot was, also, the backdrop for the release of the Sonic The Hedgehog III video game by SEGA in 1994. The Sonic the Hedgehog balloon from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade was brought to the lot, placed next to Phil, and inflated for the event.
When plans for the development of a fast food restaurant on the S&T lot were announced in May 1995, the statue needed to find a new home. At the urging of Main Street manager Nanci Puchy, Joe Sikora Sr. asked to take ownership of the statue and moved it to his ice cream and sandwich shop at the foot of Indiana Hill on Route 119 South. Steel girders were sunk deep into the edge of the lot next to the PennDOT runaway truck gravel pile and Phil sat watching over patrons of Joe's for the next 15 years.
By 2010, the statue had seen better days. Parts of the plywood had started to break off; so, a new taller Phil statue was painted by local artist Kelly Porada with the groundhog dressed in a tuxedo holding a green umbrella and topped by his ever present top hat. The steel girders, still in place from the original, held the now 28 foot statue until Thursday, April 12, 2012. On that day, an IAV Stryker National Guard all-terrain vehicle lost its brakes while coming down Indiana Hill. Under the guidance of driver Private P. Ricey of Meadville, PA, the Stryker, part of a convoy headed to the Penna. National Guard Armory, traveled through the PennDOT gravel pile and slammed into the steel girders destroying the statue and coming to a stop. Had the girders not been properly sunk in the first place, the vehicle would probably have run through the restaurant which was filled with about 20 patrons and continued until it ran into Mahoning Creek a couple hundred feet north of the restaurant. No one, including the Stryker driver and a passenger, was hurt in the accident. Three months later, the second copy of the current Phil statue was put in place to watch over patrons enjoying ice cream, hamburgers and fries and the ice cream novelty known as the Top Hat.
The cache container is from the original Smile at Phil geocache. It survived the accident intact. The cache container as of 4 Dec 2016 is new as the original box disintegrated.